On Laziness

Laziness is often discouraged as a vice. But leisure is seen as desirable. The difference between “laziness” and “leisure” is that laziness comes before work is completed, while leisure comes after work is completed. At least, that would be how I would define it. Leisure is a reward for working, while laziness typically causes problems to occur. For instance, leisure is taking a beach trip after completing a task, while laziness is neglecting to do an important task, only to have that important task directly create other problems that are important to complete.

My ultimate desire in life is leisure. I think I share that with if not everyone, a large majority. At the time of this writing, it is (almost) all that I desire. For me, leisure and laziness overlap. Although maybe I’m not defining these terms “correctly”, writing isn’t really a “leisurely” activity for me. “Leisure” is sleeping, listening to music, and watching Youtube videos. “Laziness” is more of my overall demeanor and attitude towards life: the enacted plan to receive the life of leisure. Some people work really hard in an attempt to obtain tremendous leisure, but I suppose that I attempt to create it on a regular basis by…just being lazy. The anxiety that comes with work, stress, and money, is undesirable. Many people would choose to pursue careers that paid them better. But not I, for I am lazy. Extremely lazy. Incredibly lazy. I hear constantly how this will be a detriment in my future. And I understand that. But I want to explain a few things: not to justify my laziness, as I don’t really care what anyone thinks of it, but rather, simply because, as a human, I want to express my honest feelings, like many of us do, for whatever reason.

I have always been the type of person to avoid work at all costs. I would never do my chores. Wait until the last minute to do my homework (if I did it). Generally, if there is something that needs to be done, I either wait until the last minute to do it or wait until someone else does it for me (or wait until I finally realize I have a problem due to someone else bringing it to my attention). In my head, I can hear people saying “Oh my gosh, Cody! That’s probably not a good idea. Why don’t you just be a little bit more proactive? A little bit more on top of things? A little bit more cautious? Motivated?” I just don’t want to be. I don’t think it is in my nature to be so, and I’ll explain this a little bit further.

My first “experiences” with having things that needed to be done were in school. Reading assignments, and other types of homework on worksheets. And, of course, when I got home, I just didn’t want to do them. I would start to do them, but then, I’d watch television instead. And much of the time, I did finish them later. There were many times where I didn’t do them at all, but this was the minority of the time (as I got older, this increased). Actually, come to think of it, most of the time, I finished my homework at school (in elementary school). I was pretty smart, and the work was pretty easy, but I was motivated to get the work done at school because “home” was where all of the exciting things were: television, playing outside, going to a friend’s house, etc. So I tried to get all of the work done at school that I could, and I succeeded a lot. There were also many times that I, at least, could get the work finished quickly at home. (And it also depended on the subject: “reading” was always my least favorite subject).

Come to think of it, the main subject that I procrastinated on was reading. My reading experience in elementary school was horrible. Before I started school, I read constantly. Read books out loud to my father quite a bit, from what I’ve been told, and what little I can remember. And it was enjoyable. But when school came around, my desire to read pretty much completely disappeared. The problem was something called “Accelerated Reader”. The idea was that different books in the elementary school library were rated by grade, and given a certain number of “points” based on the difficulty of the book. The “points” were earned by taking reading tests on the computer about the books. Different percentages yielded you a certain amount of points, and you were required to obtain a certain number of points every week.

That shit fucking killed my desire to read. How did it do that? Well, for one, many of the stories that I enjoyed were not worth that many “points”. So I would have to read a lot of really short books, take tests on them, and pass them to get the points. Well, that was atrocious. I hated it. And the bigger books that were worth more points obviously took longer to read. And, once again, I fucking hated it. I think the biggest reason was that many of the books just sucked to me. The problem is that you would check out a book on Monday, have a certain number of points to earn by Friday, but by Wednesday, you discovered that the book sucks, but you don’t have enough time to get a new book and read it to obtain your points. It was fucking stupid. So I “read” a lot of shitty books (most of the time, I “skimmed” or “scanned” (whichever one), then tried to bullshit my way through the test. And it was rarely pretty). It was an absolute trianwreck, and I hated reading. I read few books that I enjoyed. One of my favorite books was, surprise surprise!, a book that wasn’t even in the Accelerated Reader program. It was a book that my 4th grade teacher just had, and it was called “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing”. And I still have enjoyable memories of that book.

As far as my opinion of reading today, I typically read non-fiction. As a child, I could not understand fiction. My mind would think “This isn’t real, right? Then why am I reading this?” Of course, I enjoyed watching cartoons that weren’t real. But my problem was more of a philosophical one, as most of mine always were, and always are. I did not understand why people wrote. And because I couldn’t understand why, I didn’t care what. That’s how I’ve always been, and how I will probably always be.

Now that I have a desire to write fiction, I do understand fiction writers a little bit more. But not enough to read any significant number of them. I desire to do other things than read fiction. In fact, my desire to read fiction is very small. I suppose I’ll just have to live with myself about “missing out”.

Non-fiction is what I desire to read. I enjoy learning, and although fiction can teach you things, I prefer “reality”. (Save your breath by saying that fiction can be “real”: this isn’t an argument, it’s an opinion piece). With fiction, I need to suspend my disbelief, and use my imagination. But I don’t want to. My imagination is typically a creative endeavor, where I am the creator. And when I observe the “creative” work of someone else, I mostly care about how it was created. This was also true of me as a child. Watching movies, all I could think was “How did they do this?” I didn’t care about the story if it was a movie in which “real-life actors” were playing it. Even cartoons, I tried to figure out how they were created. But I couldn’t. And I was so fucking bored. Of course, there were some movies and cartoons that I enjoyed, for reasons such as story, etc. But the majority of my experiences with the mediums were to wonder how they were made (as opposed to the case with books, which was why they were made).

Non-fiction teaches me things. And I like to learn. I like to know things. Granted, some real things are boring. I hate the idea of being someone who mixes chemicals around in a beaker to achieve desired results. But watching someone else do it is interesting to me. I just enjoy observing: I don’t really care “what is going on underneath”. That isn’t really interesting to me, although I appreciate the fact that other people can do things with those facts. For instance, my interest in the physical sciences is very casual. I enjoyed learning about space during my teenage years, but now, I’ve accepted that it’s all dead (or, at least that the life is so far away as to be insignificant), and, seeing as how you know my opinions on fiction, “legitimate” science-fiction is an absolute joke. I currently have a vague interest in electricity, but for practical purposes, I’d rather just plug things in and have them work, and let someone else fix any electrical problems that I have to avoid the danger (and repetition and effort) needed to fix the problem. (And yes, I’m aware that if I’m too lazy to fix my own problems, and too lazy to do something that pays well, I will have tough decisions to make when I must pay someone to fix my things. I am well aware of this).

Come to think of it, I’ve always been lazy. Seeing as how I could finish my school work quickly, I procrastinated. And when the subjects started to be uninteresting, I stopped doing them altogether. My experience with laziness has been a mixed bag. Sometimes, I would be lazy and still get things done on time, but other times, it posed problems, such as missing important deadlines. But I suppose that with any “character trait”, there will be positives and negatives, and I’m not interested in becoming a “harder worker” than I already am. Because I do believe I’m a hard worker in certain respects. I work hard at being funny, and I work hard at being creative. And although few will see that as “real hard work” (meaning that somehow, some labor is more “real” than other labor, and not describing how hard the work really is), it is my work. I actually enjoy it. It reminds me of the subjects that I was uninterested in in school. Why read what is boring? Only in school are you “required” to do this. In “the real world”, it really doesn’t happen (unless you’re religious). Perhaps, deep down, I knew that. (Or perhaps I’m rationalizing). But I always worked hard to make people laugh. But let me go on a tangent about “hard work” here.

I believe that my childhood experiences with religion left a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to “hard work”. I was raised a free will baptist, which, to me, basically meant that I needed to work really hard to get into Heaven, and that so many “slip-ups” could prevent that. And I was fucking miserable during this time. The hard work truly felt futile most of the time. But I did it anyway because I was terrified. I truly didn’t know when I was going to die, and I wanted to make sure that I was going to go to Heaven when it happened. And that process was fucking exhausting. I don’t anticipate saying much more about religion in this piece, but that’s a large part of why I “became” so lazy.

I think another part of it is genetic, just based on observations of my father. I’m not going to say much more about him here out of respect, but it certainly is something to think about. Seeing his lifestyle, and observing my own, I can understand why I am how I am, whether it’s through uncontrollable genetics or learned behavior (I’m leaning towards “genetic” on this one).

In many ways, I haven’t needed to be hard-working. I’m not even talking about being a child and being reliant on parents, but I’ve always been able to do the mental work that I’ve needed to do quite easily (unless it was boring, or seemed pointless to me). Math was always easy to me (the teacher I had for pre-calculus didn’t suit me, but I’m sure I could learn calculus if I really wanted to; but I see no practical purpose for it other than “just to know it”, and I have to many other things that I wish to do instead). But I think another part of my laziness comes from my fierce, independent originality.

I know everyone is original. But my originality is who I am. It has always been hard for me to be a part of a group because I can be a bit “crazy” at times. My intellectual ideas can be a bit “harebrained”, and my creative originality is often stifled when I’m around others. And I don’t want that. So I keep to myself, do the “crazy” things that make me happy, and do my best not to “justify” them (although selling them is pretty difficult). My natural desire to be humorous is much of the same way. I still need practice thinking and writing what I believe to be intelligent things, and I need more confidence to express myself humorously. These are what I care about from a “productive” sense. This is what I want to “work hard” at. The amount of money only matters to me to the extent that I feel that I can quit all other jobs except for those. That’s the “goal” with the creative endeavors. That, and actually enjoying the work, and not treating it as a “typical” job. I will try to discuss why I believe that in another piece, as I, believe it or not, actually wish to stay on topic (don’t laugh).

I’ve always been the class clown probably ever since 3rd or 4th grade. Before that, I was the extremly quiet kid. But, for some reason, my desire to be funny came out, and it opened a Pandora’s box. Ever since then, I just can’t help myself. I want to laugh. I try to make others laugh. But as long as I can make myself laugh, then I consider that a “comedic victory”. And, luckily, that isn’t very hard to do.

So the issue isn’t that I’m “lazy”: the issue is what I’m lazy about. And although it probably would benefit me to learn how to fix my own car, or plumbing problems, or whatever, I really don’t want to. I’d rather pay someone else to do it. I don’t get any satisfaction from fixing things. In fact, in my past, if I were to somehow “fix” something that I had no knowledge of, I would get a little freaked out, and never want to do it again. For instance, figuring out how to remove a virus from my computer without anti-virus software. It happened once, and when I successfully did it, it freaked me out. I have no idea why, other than maybe my religious view of success conditioned me to respond with fear, but all I can say for sure is that I don’t like accidentally fixing problems. And purposefully fixing problems takes a lot of time and effort that I’d rather spend either lying around (thinking) or trying to do something funny (or write something like this).

It isn’t as if my mind is lazy. My mind is constantly working. At some point, I’d like to explain what is in it (or, rather, the things that I do that haven’t made it into a piece yet: obviously everything I’ve written is something I’ve thought about). But I think that is the real “solution” to this laziness problem: I’d rather use my “mind” than my body. It is more fulfilling to me, and if I can be lazy with my body, I will do it. Because my mind will always be active: I simply can’t turn it off. (God forbid I experience any brain trauma, or develop Alzheimer’s). I think it’s simply a matter of individualisticnature: some people enjoy exercising (what is wrong with them? Lol), and some people don’t. Some enjoy reading, some don’t. Etc. etc.

But even with the work that I enjoy creating, I am lazy. But this is due to several factors. One, as I said before, there are other things that I desire to do more. I said I would talk about this in another piece, but I’ll actually do so now. I enjoy observing other people. I enjoy developing what I believe made a successful person “successful”, and I try to see if I have that in myself. I spend a lot of time observing, and listening, and seeing if I believe I have that same ability, or those same traits. I’ve spent a significant amount of my life doing this, actually. I’ve also spent a lot of my life saying “That looks easy: I can do that”, and, of course, I’ve tried, and discovered that many of these things are a lot fucking harder than they look (trying out for the high school basketball team may have been the first instance where I truly realized this. I also accepted my laziness in that moment…). But if someone is successful at something that I believe I would enjoy doing, and desire to be successful at, I will do it. That’s why I started my Youtube channel (and it has been very fun thus far).

I also have many things to read (mainly non-fiction, of course), and many things to write. The reading is, of course, about certain subjects that I enjoy (mainly economics, because I enjoy learning about it (because I believe it will help me make more money)). And the list of things to read is so long. Mainly pdfs on the laptop that I’m using to write this right now (see “time and physical object” constraints (it’s hard to write and read on the same laptop at the exact same time (see “impossible”))). And I’m “in the middle” of many different pieces of non-fiction (here’s all of the pieces of non-fiction that I am currently “in the middle” of (or, at least, have started reading)): The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Tree of Knowledge by Alvin Boyd Kuhn, The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand, The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche, The Pure Theory of Capital by Friedrich Hayek, Human Action by Ludwig von Mises, Economic Controversies by Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto by Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State; The Betrayal of the American Right; and The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar (all by Rothbard); and On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena by Nikola Tesla. So considering that I’m reading all of these “at once” so I don’t get bogged down with any one topic, it kind of makes sense to me why so many things remain “unread” on my part.

One more thing about the “religious” factor. I’ve written about this before, so I won’t describe it in much more detail here. But what I have written there explains what contributed to my overall lazy demeanor as well. I saw rich people as greedy, and saw money as evil. (If that sounds weird, just accept that I believed it, and maybe I’ll discuss it further later on in my life, but I’m honestly getting sick of talking about that). I kept money (that I obtained mainly through birthdays) and spent it every now and then (mainly on Yugioh cards…Jesus), but I still hated money. I recall being, maybe 15 or so, and, seemingly, having a wallet full of at least a couple hundred dollars (I think the most I ever had at one time was around $400. Maybe it was $800 after saving up for several years. I can’t remember.), and hating it. I felt so dirty having it. But I also loved it. And I hated myself for loving it, because “the love of money is the root of all evil”. It was a fucking trainwreck. So my envy of the rich, hearing that all rich people were “greedy” and “took advantage of poor people”, and feeling religious guilt about enjoying money all contributed to my dislike of money, and, therefore, my disinterest in working. I realize that will be really weird for many people to read. I just thank Ron Paul for getting me on the path towards desiring to make money.

I’ll throw one more short thought in here about an aspect of my laziness that I haven’t mentioned yet: my health. I do not enjoy “exercise”. I used to play basketball, but I haven’t in a while, as I’ve been working towards making my “dream career” a reality for the past four years (it’s pretty much a full-time job and then some, with tons of unpaid overtime (lmfao)). But typical exercise is too boring for me. I really enjoy swimming (although I don’t do that often), and, as I mentioned before, I enjoyed basketball (it’s been so long that I’m not sure I’d still like it, but I honestly think that I would), but lifting weights or running just to get into shape doesn’t appeal to me. My diet consists of Subway (pretty much every day), microwaved dinners, and sugary snacks. My thoughts drift everywhere from “I don’t want to die” to “let me test the waters to see what happens” to “one day I’m going to wake up with diabetes and be knocking on the door of a heart attack”; and, depending on the moment, I’m either ok with that or terrified by that. A large reason that I’m so “accepting” of being on death’s door goes back to my past religious thoughts. Not about getting into Heaven, but rather feeling that being healthy was somehow…unreligious? “God is in control” leads you to stop being proactive, and that pretty much happened to me. Being on the outside now and seeing other people do that is very depressing, and I’m embarrassed that I was like that at one point. I pray that others will be saved from that horrible helplessness one day.

So, I think I want to work on accepting my laziness. Working with other “unskilled labor” provides you with all kinds of people that you wish you didn’t have to work with on a regular basis. But, in the area in which I live, the types of “skilled labor” available don’t interest me. Electrician? I’m not scrupulous and aware enough for that. I would probably kill myself on accident. Mechanic? I don’t really want to lift heavy pieces of metal regularly. Factory work? It remains to be seen, but I’d rather keep my near-minimum wage job simply because I’m just too lazy to try something different (although I believe I’d like the labor I’m currently doing more so than the labor I’d be doing at the plant. The extra money doesn’t really matter to me). I care more about enjoying the labor that I do than the pay. I don’t want to do something I hate for lots of money. I’m willing to make significantly less money to wake up every day and enjoy my labor. But, of course, there is a bare minimum (which I’m pretty much at right now). My time is very precious to me, and if I must do something for money, I want to enjoy it. I’m not that concerned with my standard of living as long as I’m not starving to death. I’m not very materialistic. I just want to enjoy a job that isn’t that difficult. And, preferably, one that limits boredom.

So that’s why I write fiction, non-fiction, and comedy on the internet. I value enjoying the work that I create, so I only try to create things that I enjoy. I decided upon this a long time ago, back in my “anti-business mentality” age. And I still believe it to this day, regardless of how my perspective about money has changed. I want to have fun. Material possessions do not mean that much to me. I care much more about my free time, and being lazy.

I genuinely believe that I can become a good enough writer, and good enough comedian, to become a “professional” in these artistic areas. I enjoy working towards that and learning everything I have learned while attempting this in the process.